Small children have a natural tendency to climb and explore and do not wish to be restrained in a room or in a crib or playpen. The tendency to climb, of course, creates a number of hazards. Efforts have been made in the past to restrain children such as by the use of products referred to as safety gates.
The problem arises in various environments such as trying to keep children within a room (or excluded from a room, such as a kitchen where hazards exist) or within a play area (such as a crib or playpen or other enclosure) where a climbing child is at risk of falling or at risk of going into an unsafe area after exiting the play area.
The identification of the problems and the proposed solutions will be given in the context of keeping a child on one side of a barrier and/or keeping a child restrained within a play or sleep area, it being understood, however, that these are all exemplary and non-limiting.
Passageway barriers, also called child or baby safety gates, are designed to serve as temporary means of closing off access to potentially dangerous or otherwise restricted areas of a house or other domicile or place of business to prevent children or animals from passing beyond the barrier.
There are a great variety of such partitioning barriers available on the market today. Passageway barriers are made of rigid materials, such as wood, molded plastic or metal or a combination thereof. Some of these rigid barriers are stationary and require an adult who wishes to pass through the passageway to either step over the barrier or find a way around the barrier. Examples of such barriers are illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,787,174, issued to Tyrone Brown on Nov. 19, 1988, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,655,087, issued to Jesper Andersen on Dec. 2, 2003. Other rigid-material barriers include a gate, which can be swung open to provide easier passage for adults. Examples of this type of barriers are U.S. Pat. No. 4,685,247, issued to Aftab Alam on Aug. 11, 1987, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,370,823 B1, issued to Finn Andersen on Apr. 16, 2002.
Rigid child safety barriers and/or passageway barriers, however, suffer a number of significant shortcomings. First, they can be large and cumbersome, which lessens their portability. In addition, toddlers or young children may be able to climb many barriers of this type, especially if their barrier panels are comprised of a grid of rigid members or a gridiron of molded plastic. The hazards of climbing these gates by young children are obvious and include the risk of falling as well as children having their fingers or toes getting caught in the grid of barrier panels. Also, repeated attempts to climb the gate can loosen the gate's positioning in its place, thereby reducing its reliability in preventing passage and increasing the risk of injury. This is especially likely for friction-mounted gates, e.g. those that are not permanently fastened to the sides of the passageway with screws or nails but rather held in place by spring-loaded devices. Furthermore, nearly all child safety gates are too tall for most adults to step over. The height of safety gates can significantly raise the risk of injury particularly when the adult tries to step over the gate while carrying a child. Child safety barriers with openable gates are designed to overcome the problem of allowing access by the adult (i.e., authorized access). However, these openable gates require at least one free hand—a significant inconvenience for a person attending to a child—and the latches tend to be too stiff and difficult to operate.
Another common type of passageway barrier makes use of a flexible partitioning screen or membrane that can be releasably extended between the two sides of a passageway. Examples of these types of barriers are illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 6,375,165 B1, issued to Richard Sherratt, et al on Apr. 23, 2002, and U.S. Pat. No. 7,178,792 B2, issued to Robert Monahan et al. on Feb. 20, 2007. While these barriers pose greater difficulties for the climbing child, it should be appreciated that some children are able to grab the top edge of the partitioning screen and pull themselves up high enough to swing a foot over the top edge for additional leverage and overcome the barrier. This again creates a serious health hazard to the child from falling off the top of the barrier. For the adult, passing through the passageway blocked by a flexible membrane child safety barrier may not be any easier than when a rigid barrier is installed within the passageway. This is because flexible barriers also require at least one free hand to open and close the screen. In fact, some flexible barriers may require two-handed operation. In addition, this type of barrier also cannot be easily and safely stepped over because this type is usually as tall as the rigid type barriers.
Similar problems are encountered with conventional cribs, playpens and play yards. More specifically, most cribs and bounded play areas for small children are designed to ensure that infants and toddlers are unable to climb out. In the case of cribs, for example, this often means that they are made sufficiently deep as judged by crib manufacturers. While a greater crib depth may reduce the likelihood of a child climbing out, it comes at a cost of significant inconvenience for parents and makes the possible fall more dangerous for children who manage to overcome a taller crib side. Laying a sleeping child into a deep crib often presents a nontrivial physical challenge, as the parent must lean all the way into the bottom of the crib while holding the child in both arms and trying not to wake the child. Until recently some cribs had drop sides, slide-down sides or drop gates designed to address this major inconvenience. However, most such crib designs are no longer considered safe following the changes in crib safety standards in June 2011. In addition, it has been observed that despite the considerable crib depth, some small children are capable of climbing out of the crib as long as they can reach the rim of the crib. Thus, the need for a more effective child safety barrier for keeping children safe within their cribs, playpens, and other play areas is apparent.